Cloud Computing: A General User s Perceptions and Security Issues at Universities of Faisalabad, Pakistan

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1 375 Cloud Computing: A General User s Perceptions and Security Issues at Universities of Faisalabad, Pakistan Muhammad Haris Abid 1, Fahad Jan 2, Tasleem Mustafa 3, Muhammad Shakeel Faridi 4 1,4 MS(CS) Student of Computer Science, University of Agriculture Faisalabad, Punjab, 38000, Pakistan 2 Lecturer, Department of Computer Science, University of Agriculture, Faisalabad Punjab, 38000, Pakistan 3 Chairman/Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science, University of Agriculture, Faisalabad Punjab, 38000, Pakistan Abstract We are going through the era of information. While going through this era, this has become nearly impossible to achieve the desired goals without using emerging information technologies. In third world countries, this is becoming very hard to run with the pace at which new technologies are emerging and changing our lives over a night. Third world countries are facing a lack of resources problems in the field of information technologies. This lack of resources has increased the importance of resource sharing between different organizations, specially the educational establishments. When we discuss the resource sharing, the idea of Cloud computing is originated. This paper will focus on the user s general perception and what sort of issue they can face while using cloud computing. To carry out this research work a survey questionnaire method is adopted. This work involved group of users from different universities of Faisalabad, Pakistan. Keywords: Cloud Computing, Grid Computing, Information Technology 1. Introduction Societies are now moving towards innovation. They are demanding every basic necessity of life at their door step. Every person wants to avail these facilities whenever he/she desired. This desire can be fulfilled if it will be available under one umbrella. Now, information technology is also as necessary as other basic utilities of life. Cost of these utilities is based on their usage. In cloud computing IT services are available under one umbrella [1]. Cloud computing is one among fastest growing technologies. With low financial budget and limited available resources, education sector can become level one beneficiary of cloud computing. Conspiracy is created when different definitions and implementation from Amazon, Google and Microsoft are focused. Education sector became confused in this situation [2]. Despite of these hurdles many work is required in cloud computing and much flexibility is available in this technology. 2. Cloud Computing Cloud computing can be define in two ways, the one is, it is a computer facility that is provide via the internet, the other is that it is a computer facility that accessing via the internet from different locations. When a school or university, for example, moves to cloud computing for online operations, it necessarily considers both of the equation [13]. Cloud computing is becoming popular due to its virtualized, elastic, saleable and on-demand services [17]. Cloud computing is based on concept of grid and client server computing or peer to peer service. Therefore it is not a new technology so an educational institute should not feel worry while converting on these technology [5]. Cloud services can be accessible through internet from anywhere. Consumer can use services without paying extra charges of hardwares, softwares, networks, people and trainings. In other cases one should have to pay total price of each component is being used [16]. It is observed that some services or utilities charged more when in peak mode. Cloud computing is free of all these issues [6]. 3. Cloud Computing Deployment Models Its different level of deployment models (public, private, hybrid and community) and service models (Infrastructure, Platform and Software) made more flexible for education especially. These features

2 376 enable it to share services of one educational institute to another at deployment and service models [3]. Deployment cloud models are described as following. 3.1 Public Cloud Public cloud model offers services like utility services i.e. electricity. It means these kinds of model present services for everyone. These models are usually less secure and it is difficult to define scope of public models [8]. 3.2 Community Cloud These models are usually public but for same community or concerns. Community cloud models have larger in boundary than private models and lesser than public models [14]. 3.3 Private Cloud These models are normally designed for a single organization or a university. Different departments of an organization or university can share it services. It is more secured than all other cloud models. It has limited in scope. Only authenticated user can access these services [8]. 3.4 Hybrid Cloud It is combination of two or more same/ different cloud models. It is more flexible. It is more secured than public and less secure than private model. It can be developed by joining two organizations or universities. It can be treated as public or private [8, 15]. Increasing demand of IT resources especially in educational projects, research and teaching made it essential to find out a way in which maximum resource can be available with low cost. It is difficult for a single university to provide all desired resource at same time. Cloud computing brings hope for those universities who are located in third world countries like Pakistan [4]. Due to its issues, educational institutes feel reluctant while adopting cloud computing. They do not want to share their campus confidential data. Some consider it will increase misuse of IT services and will lead towards hacking issues [7]. In cloud computing scenario end user have to developed trust on third party which is offering that particular service. It is a tough job for a company or a person that have some confidential data. Everyone needs security about his/her personal or confidential data [8]. Google and Amazon are providing different services as third party. Critics of cloud computing blamed cloud computing for security problems. Security issues are occurred when a person misuse some ones laptop and Computers. If one forgot his/ her password on Google than this it is not a fault of cloud computing it is an authentication problem [9]. This research work includes the following objectives: To focus on the user s general perception about Cloud Computing. What sort of security issues they can face while using cloud computing. The evaluation is based on case study of four universities of Faisalabad, Pakistan where more than 50 users of IT are worked on their own developed systems. A survey questionnaire was designed on self assessment based. Survey is containing several areas of cloud computing but in this paper two areas are focused i.e. user s general perception about Cloud Computing and issues they can face while using cloud computing. This research work comprises the following section: section 4 contains that how survey designed, published and who is the population of said survey. Section 5 the related work. Section 6 the results about general perception of cloud computing and issues faced by said universities. In section 7 conclusion and future work is discussed. 4. Survey Methodology This survey is conducted on IT administration and IT staff of four local universities of Faisalabad, Pakistan where more than fifty respondents are working. Survey included twenty five questions Table. 1. The questionnaire including its rating scale is designed to evaluate the user s perception and security issues of cloud computing. An inquiry tool was developed to access this questionnaire. Users is rated the each question from the given value for evaluation and to promote the cloud computing concept. This design method is selected due to its easiness, manageable and secure. 5. Related Work A self assessed questionnaire was designed to evaluate the user s general perception and issues regarding cloud computing. The adoption purpose of this method was due to it is cost effective, easy to access and efficient way to gather the data from participants. The survey includes different options for evaluation. To access the objectives, an inquiry tool was designed Figure.1. The purpose of designing this tool is due to ease of access, free of cost and quick response from the users. This inquiry tool is also a very good concept of cloud computing because users are accessed this application over a internet.

3 377 Table.1 Selected questionnaire for assessment of general perception and issues of cloud computing Responses received from users were managed through inquiry application. The users have to rate the question as per value they perceived from the given data. 50 users from 4 universities of Faisalabad, Pakistan are answered the questions. There were 30 out of 50 having master level of education with 5+ year s experience. 12 out of 50 have bachelor in computer science and having less than 5 years experience while remaining 8 out of 50 have bachelor in computer science with 2 years working experience. Fig. 1 Assessment tool to evaluate the general perception and issues of cloud computing 6. Results and Analysis A criterion at which evaluation questionnaire was designed is given below in Table 1. The selection of questionnaire was based on previous literature [5, 6, 7, 8]. Fig. 2 Graphical presentation of respondent qualification and experience

4 378 The author received the response from all 50 users completely. The below figure show that how many participants are knowing about the cloud computing change in information technology. When we asked about how to establish the cloud computing models 36 % said yes they know. 25% said yes they know cloud computing models. Regarding idea of cloud service model 55% said yes they have an idea of cloud computing models. When we asked the working of cloud computing models 41% said yes they have an idea. 39% said yes they have practical experience in cloud computing while 61% said no they don t have any experience. 77% said yes cloud computing is beneficial for education sector while other said no there are lot of issue in cloud computing for education sectors. When we asked, Is it bigger than internet 25% said yes. 75% said yes we know how it works. When we asked the prefer model of cloud service for their institute Fig. 5 showing the results we received. Fig. 3 Graphical presentation of Cloud Computing awareness from the participants Fig.3 is showing about the awareness of cloud computing from the selected participants of 4 universities. 88% participants of received respond are very well aware about the cloud computing while 12% are eliminated due to unawareness of cloud computing. Now the 44 out of 50 participants are participated in the remaining evaluation questionnaire. 6.1 Response received against general perception of cloud computing Fig. 5 Graphical presentation of Preferred Model of Cloud Service 50% said they will prefer SaaS (Software as Service) model, 40% said they will prefer PaaS (Platform as Service) model and 10% said they will prefer to use IaaS (Infrastructure as Service) model. The response against the question which cloud model would you like to establish. Fig. 6 showing the result we received. Fig. 4 Graphical presentation of General Perception of Cloud Computing Fig.4 is showing the results of questionnaire which were asked from the 4 universities IT staff. 70% agreed that the cloud computing is emerging concept and will helpful for every field of life. 45% participants said yes cloud computing can bring mega Fig. 6 Graphical presentation of preferred cloud model

5 % said they will prefer private model, 25% said they will prefer hybrid model and 13% said they will prefer for their institute is public cloud model. 6.2 Response received against security issues of cloud computing Fig. 7 Graphical presentation of Security Issues of Cloud Computing Fig.7 is showing that which sort of issue can occur while using cloud computing facility. The security issues questionnaire were asked from the participants and the Fig.4 show that positive reply in Yes were received from 4 universities IT staff. 7. Conclusion and Future work The purpose of this research work is to evaluate the user s general perception and security issues regarding cloud computing. For this purpose a survey was conducted through an inquiry tool to evaluate the objectives from IT administrators of 4 different universities of Faisalabad, Pakistan. In Pakistan where peoples are not well aware about information technology and will take time to know the concept of cloud computing. Findings are showing that most of the participants are familiar with cloud computing but unfortunately some of them have not much clear due to lack of resources. 91% participants replied that using of cloud computing is a highly security risk due to research and development projects of different universities will be harmful, they contained confidential data and sharing of resources. Some universities have cost issue that they don t have sufficient budget for cloud computing. So there is a need of trainings, brain storming session of IT administrators of universities to highlight cloud computing importance as it is among fastest growing technology. In future a cloud model will be suggested according to requirements of IT administrators at universities of Faisalabad, Pakistan. References [1] Buyya, R. and C. S. Yeo. (2008). Market-oriented cloud computing: Vision, hype, and reality for delivering it services as computing utilities, IEEE. [2] Cappos, J. and I. Beschastnikh. (2009). Seattle: a platform for educational cloud computing, ACM. [3] Al Noor, S., G. Mustafa, et al. (2010). A Proposed Architecture of Cloud Computing for Education System in Bangladesh and the Impact on Current Education System. IJCSNS International Journal of Computer Science and Network Security, Vol.10, No. 10, pp [4] Aymerich, F. M. and G. Fenu. (2008). An approach to a cloud computing network, IEEE. [5] Marston, S., Z. Li, et al. (2011). Cloud computing The business perspective. Decision Support Systems, Vol. 51, No.1, pp [6] Katzan Jr, H. (2010). The education value of cloud computing. Contemporary Issues in Education Research (CIER), Vol. 3 No.7 pp [7] Andrei, T. and R. Jain (2009). Cloud Computing Challenges and related security issues. A Survey Paper. DOI= cse. wustl. edu/~ jain/cse571-09/ftp/cloud. pdf. [8] Ramgovind, S., M. Eloff, et al. (2010). The management of security in cloud computing, IEEE. [9] Armbrust, M. and A. Fox. (2010). A view of cloud computing. Communications of the ACM Vol. 53, No. 4, pp [10] Dikaiakos, M. D. and D. Katsaros. (2009). Cloud computing: Distributed Internet computing for IT and scientific research. Internet Computing, IEEE, Vol. 13, No. 5, pp [11] Khmelevsky, Y. and V. Voytenko (2010). Cloud computing infrastructure prototype for university education and research, ACM. [12] Wheeler, B. and S. Waggener (2009). Above-campus services: shaping the promise of cloud computing for higher education. Educause Review, Vol. 44, No.6, pp [13] Anderson, C The Long Tail. New York: Hyperion. [14] T, Grance. And P. Mell. (2011). The NIST Definition of Cloud Computing Recommendations of the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Nist Special Publication, pp [15] Bal, N. S. (2012). Clouds for Different Services. IJCSI International Journal of Computer Science Issues, Vol. 9, Issue 4, No 1, pp

6 380 [16] Manesh, E. R., M. Jamshidi., A. Zareie. and S. Abdi.(2012). Presentation an approach for useful availability servers cloud computing in schedule list algorithm. IJCSI International Journal of Computer Science Issues, Vol. 9, Issue 4, No 3, pp [17] Chen, M. Y. and S. Y. Tsai. (2010). Optimal provisioning of resource in a cloud service. IJCSI International Journal of Computer Science Issues, Vol. 7, Issue 6, pp Muhammad Haris Abid is a student of MS (Computer Science) in University of Agriculture, Faisalabad, Pakistan. He has been published two research papers in different journals. His area of interest is software engineering, Cloud Computing databases, Theory of Automata and Algorithms. Fahad Jan is a Lecturer in Department of Computer Science, Faculty of Sciences, University of Agriculture, Faisalabad, Pakistan. He received his MS(CS) from University of Agriculture, Faisalabad, Pakistan. His area of research is in the design and implementation of advanced programming languages, including functional languages, object-oriented languages and concurrent languages. Database and information systems; web data management; distributed databases; information integration; objectoriented database technology. Tasleem Mustafa received his MS(CS) from University of Agriculture, Faisalabad, Pakistan, MSC(CS) from University of Engineering and Technology, Lahore, Pakistan, MSC(Mathematics) from University of Punjab, Lahore, Pakistan and MIS from USA. He is working as a Chairman/Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science, Faculty of Sciences, University of Agriculture, Faisalabad, Pakistan. His research of interest includes software engineering and database technologies. Muhammad Shakeel Faridi is a student of MS (Computer Science) in University of Agriculture, Faisalabad, Pakistan. He has been published five research papers in different journals. He is the Member of IACSIT- Member NO. : (International Association of Computer Science and Information Technology) Singapore, Member of Editorial Review Board, Journal of Information Technology Education, 131 Brookhill Court, Santa Rosa, California USA., Honorary Peer Reviewer of GJCST - Global Journal of Computer Science and Technology in Global Journals I Inc. U.S.A and Member of the editorial board, International Greener Journals (IGJ), Ikeja, Lagos Nigeria. His area of interest is software engineering, human computer interaction, databases and data warehousing and data mining.